Kim Won’t Talk on N. Korea’s Nuclear Arms, DIA Chief Says

Dictator Kim Jong Un, “firmly in
control” of the North Korean regime, isn’t ready to negotiate
about ending his nuclear and missile programs, according to the
top U.S. military intelligence official.

North Korea is “no longer willing to negotiate over
eliminating its nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” Army
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency, said in testimony to the Senate Armed
Services Committee yesterday.

While Kim’s threats of missile launches and nuclear tests
“leave North Korea more isolated economically and
diplomatically, we believe North Korea’s intent ultimately is to
convince the United States of the futility of continued
sanctions and force the U.S. back to negotiations on terms more
favorable to North Korea,” Flynn wrote in a statement released
at the hearing.

Flynn’s testimony came a day after Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the U.S.
won’t “come to the table” for negotiations “without some
pretty ironclad concept on how we’re going forward on the
denuclearization.”

The DIA chief wrote that North Korea is “convinced of its
need to possess nuclear weapons as a guarantor of its national
security,” and “is more likely now to push for negotiations
over security guarantees, a peace treaty and elimination of
economic sanctions.”

Cracking Down

Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday
that Kim has been emboldened because he doesn’t expect China to
react strongly to his actions.

“One of the calculations I know that has been in Kim Jong
Un’s mind is that he can kind of do this and get away with it
because he doesn’t believe China will crack down on him,” Kerry
said.

Kerry, who met with Chinese leaders on April 13 to push for
greater efforts to restrain North Korea, said the government in
Beijing doesn’t want “a war on their doorstep or a completely
destabilized” Korean peninsula.

“The best way to avoid that, needless to say, is to move
to change the dynamic,” Kerry said yesterday. “No country has
as much leverage with North Korea as China.”

Kim, who took power after his father died in December 2011,
is a charismatic leader who is unlikely to risk a conflict that
threatens the regime’s survival, according to Flynn.

Risking Survival

“North Korea’s large, forward-positioned military can
attack South Korea with little or no warning, but it suffers
from logistics shortages, aging equipment and poor training,”
Flynn wrote. “Pyongyang likely knows it cannot reunite the
Korean Peninsula by force and is unlikely to attack on a scale
that would risk the survival of its regime.”

The North and South were divided 60 years ago by the
armistice that suspended the Korean War.

North Korea said this week the U.S. must remove all its
nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and end joint military
exercises with South Korea before it will agree to talks, laying
out conditions the U.S. has already rejected. The U.S. removed
its nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991.

Kim “possesses a charisma that his father did not and is
depicted as a caring but firm leader, much in the image of his
grandfather,” Flynn said.

Kim appears to feel “maybe more intensely than his
father” that nuclear weapons are “the key to their survival,”
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate
armed services panel.

Region on Edge

The official Korean Central News Agency, citing a statement
from the National Defense Commission, said the U.S. and South
Korea are to blame for increased tensions in the region and must
apologize for their provocations. Kim’s regime said negotiations
are possible only after North Korea has enough nuclear weapons
to deter an attack.

The region has been on edge since North Korea tested an
atomic weapon in February, then said annual U.S.-South Korean
drills that began last month have brought the peninsula to the
brink of war. U.S. President Barack Obama this week said that
while he hoped North Korea would return to the bargaining table,
he refused to reward its “provocative behavior.”

Navy Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of the U.S. Pacific
Command, told Congress April 9 that Kim is “more
unpredictable” than his late father, Kim Jong Il, and that
“it’s not clear to me that he has thought through how to get
out of” the cycle of provocations.

‘Particularly Challenging’

“This is what makes this scenario, I think, particularly
challenging,” Locklear said.

Kim’s government last month threatened preemptive nuclear
strikes against South Korea and the American mainland, which
would require an ability to launch a nuclear missile that Obama
on April 16 said North Korea doesn’t have.

Negotiations can’t take place until the United Nations
removes sanctions and no preconditions are made to give up its
“sovereign right” to develop nuclear capabilities for self-
defense, KCNA said.